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    Simplicity: Finding Freedom From The Inside Out
    Simplicity: Finding Freedom From The Inside Out
    Simplicity: Finding Freedom From The Inside Out
    Ebook152 pages2 hours

    Simplicity: Finding Freedom From The Inside Out

    By Emily Josephine

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    About this ebook

    Simplicity. In order to find it, people declutter, downsize, and destress. They start a garden, stop watching television, and boycott breadmakers.

    All of that is good, but none of it brings true simplicity. How do you find true simplicity?

    Simple living does not start with an act or a decision. If a person endeavors to make outward changes without making the corresponding inward change, eventually her life will revert to what it was before. A decluttered closet will be filled to the brim within a few months.

    Simple living starts with a new perspective – about life and living, about culture and choices. This book encourages you to step back, look at your dreams and your reality, get to know yourself on a deep level...so that you can know what simplicity is for you.

    Simplicity begins on the inside, and eventually manifests itself on the outside – in everyday words, thoughts, and actions.

    So this book consists of two parts. The first part is education. Seeds are sown when new information is received. The first part of the book is going to cover a variety of modern-day issues that tend to oppress personal freedom and hinder sustainable lifestyle choices.

    The second part of the book gets into the Template of Simple Living, where you create your own meaning and vision of a simple life.

    If you are searching for:

    Greater personal freedom,
    Less stress, and
    More happiness and fulfillment,

    This book will help you. Guaranteed. Happy simplicity. :)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEmily Josephine
    Release dateOct 22, 2015
    ISBN9781311808684
    Simplicity: Finding Freedom From The Inside Out
    Author

    Emily Josephine

    A former sugar addict, Emily is now a fervent health nut. A former schoolteacher, she is now an avid advocate of homeschooling. A former too-much-stuff-city-dweller, she is now living her dream as a semi-minimalist rural homesteader.In between planting seeds, reading to her son, and making videos of her homestead, Emily writes both non-fiction related to health and simple living, as well as inspirational novels with characters who are often as radically anti-mainstream as she is!

    Read more from Emily Josephine

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      Book preview

      Simplicity - Emily Josephine

      Simplicity: Finding Freedom From The Inside Out

      by Emily Josephine

      ©Copyright 2015. All rights reserved. You have permission to quote small portions of this book in other publications, digital or print, as long as you give credit to the author and include a link to her website, http://liveyourdreamswithemily.com.

      Disclaimer: Any attempt to drastically change one’s lifestyle should be approached with prayer and care. Readers assumes all risk for applying any information in this book to his or her life.

      Distributed by Smashwords.

      Smashwords License Note

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite online e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table Of Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter One: The Money Dilemma

      Chapter Two: The Nine-To-Five Job

      Chapter Three: Personal Finance

      Chapter Four: Bigger And Better

      Chapter Five: Food

      Chapter Six: Health Care

      Chapter Seven: Energy And The Grid

      Chapter Eight: The Internet And Related Technology

      Chapter Nine: Institutional Education

      Chapter Ten: Toxicity

      Chapter Eleven: Picking Your Priorities

      Chapter Twelve: Eliminate Internal Obstacles

      Chapter Thirteen: Eliminate External Obstacles

      Chapter Fourteen: A Sustainable Journey

      Chapter Fifteen: Your Simplicity Plan

      Other books by Emily Josephine

      About/Connect with Emily Josephine

      Introduction

      Simplicity. In order to find it, people declutter, downsize, and destress. They start a garden, stop watching television, and boycott breadmakers.

      All of that is good, but none of it brings true simplicity. Simple living does not start with an act or a decision. If a person endeavors to make outward changes without making the corresponding inward change, eventually her life will revert to what it was before. A decluttered closet will be filled to the brim within a few months.

      Simple living starts with a new perspective – about life and living, about culture and choices. The desire for simplicity begins as a seed, a vague awareness that life doesn’t have to be – shouldn’t be – so confusing, so burdensome. Sometimes, it grows quickly, sprouting up overnight and blossoming large and beautiful, like a brilliantly-colored mushroom in a woods after a rainfall.

      Usually, the seed slowly germinates and grows gradually while you become increasingly aware of the various difficulties that modern life has brought. With each new awareness, the flower of simplicity unfolds a little more, until finally it is a broad, beautiful show of color.

      What is this flower? What is this blossom that leads to simplicity?

      It is the quest for and discovery of genuine freedom. Not a freedom that someone else invents for you: Start an online business and be financially free in six months! or a freedom that society has dictated for its members: Freedom comes when you get an education and can get a well-paying job once you graduate.

      This leads us to another question:

      What is genuine freedom?

      The short answer is being free to be the person God designed you to be, to do what you believe He has called you to do. It has to do, in part, with your personal purpose.

      But only in part. Because you are only a small part of a big world. You are one person in several billion. The decisions you make, the actions you take, even the thoughts you allow to take root in your mind impact everyone else on Earth, if even in just a small way.

      They affect the planet itself, when it comes down to it. And if you are seeking freedom for yourself, it is only fair to seek it in the context of helping not only your fellow human beings, but helping Earth itself.

      That may sound like the exact opposite of simplicity, but in a complex world, a world composed of innumerable relationships and ecosystems, it can’t be just about personal purpose. It has to be about good stewardship, as well. So we might say that the flower of simplicity results from discovering your purpose, and living it out in a way that reflects respect for both the purpose of other people, and of nature itself.

      What this book is not

      Most books about simple living give you the how-to’s of all the things listed in the first paragraph. That’s fine; I have written a book like that myself, and have been helped in the past by similar books.

      But that is not the purpose of this book. Instead, it exists to encourage you to step back, look at your dreams and your reality, get to know yourself on a deep level…so that you can know what simplicity is for you.

      See, you have a different background, different experiences, and different perspectives on various issues than I do. We may generally agree on most everything, but when it gets down to brass tacks, we will still perceive differently and have different needs and wants. That is why you will not hear me giving you shoulds in this book: You should live in a tiny house. You should be a vegan. You should move to an eco-village. You should do all your laundry by hand.

      Instead of shoulding on you, I offer you a template that allows you to figure out who you are at your core, and design a simple life around that. For you, that may be living in an apartment in a suburb where you grow tomatoes, greens, and herbs on your balcony in the summer and – year-round – give piano lessons in between playing for your local symphony.

      For another reader, the simple life might mean raising a large family in the country, earning an income by raising goats and producing goat milk and related products.

      Neither choice is bad, as long as both parties feel that they are living out their purpose in the most sustainable manner possible.

      What this book is

      Simplicity begins on the inside, and eventually manifests itself on the outside – in everyday words, thoughts, and actions. A big part of living a simpler life is focusing on what you believe your purpose, or calling, to be.

      So this book consists of two parts. The first part is education. Seeds are sown when new information is received. The first part of the book is going to cover a variety of modern-day issues that tend to oppress personal freedom and hinder sustainable lifestyle choices.

      If you think you know all you need to know – the dangers of the food industry, the problems with the educational system, and so on – I still encourage you to read the first part. I find I always gain new nuggets from a book, even if I already know most of the information it offers.

      The second part of the book gets into the Template of Simple Living, which can be broken into three main parts:

      1. Determine your priorities.

      2. Eliminate whatever is in your life that get in the way of your priorities.

      3. Take Earth- and relationship-sustainable steps every day toward fulfilling your purpose.

      Sounds simple, doesn’t it? That’s because life was never meant to be complicated! At least, not as complicated as we’ve made it. Of course, the diversity and number of people on the planet automatically bring unavoidable levels of complexity. Still, when you seek to live a simple, fulfilling life that respects the needs of others, many of the complexities fade into the woodwork.

      Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself.

      That’s not always easy. But I am not promising any part of the processes this book will take you through will be easy. Simple and easy are not synonyms.

      Things will be made easier, however, if you remember one thing: the world is not a perfect place, and nobody living on it is perfect.

      A word on perfectionism

      This is an imperfect world where bad things happen to good people; prejudices, stereotypes and self-deceptions cause misunderstandings and warped perceptions; and unexpected – often unwanted – twists seem to be the norm.

      It is also a technology-driven world.

      To have ideals is a good and noble thing, but you will be miserable if you expect those ideals to manifest in the precise form that you envision.

      This is another reason that I am not going to should on you in this book: everybody’s life circumstances are different. What you wish could be your ideal simple life may be – and probably is – impossible, because you are not alone. Again, it’s a matter of living your life in the context of relationships with other people, and in the context of your calling.

      I’ll use myself as an example. When my son was two, we were living in the suburbs and I desperately wanted to quit using the clothes dryer. But every time I hung laundry out on the lines in the backyard, my son would throw clods of dirt at it! I had to wait a couple of years before I could do this. I had my ideal, but the timing was not right to act on that ideal.

      I also would love to be able

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